


The Sink of Blood and Crushed Veneer

by rawthorne (noisette)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Mentions of Character Death, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-10
Updated: 2011-07-10
Packaged: 2017-10-21 05:37:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/221514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noisette/pseuds/rawthorne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oberyn Martell knows how to handle a spear, say the whisperers; he is a vicious fighter and his blade is always poisoned. It’s hardly surprising, then, that poisoned, too, is his invitation. (Missing scene set during A Storm of Swords)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sink of Blood and Crushed Veneer

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Books 1 through 3. Mentions of character death.
> 
> Title from Bon Iver's _Skinny Love_.

“Why, he’s so pale, my lord, I can scarcely think what to do with him.” Ellaria’s voice filters through from the safety of her perch on a silk-covered divan, a whisper of sin on her Lysene lips. Her own skin is dark, her hair spilling over her shoulders in black curls as she peels into an orange. “You can tell he’s highborn with those eyes and that pretty, pretty skin, but his mouth is made for kissing.”

He laughs, this self-styled Prince of Dorne, and his hand grips Loras by the chin. “Is it now?” Any desire to escape flounders under the intense scrutiny of liquid eyes and calloused hands. Oberyn Martell knows how to handle a spear, say the whisperers; he is a vicious fighter and his blade is always poisoned. It’s hardly surprising, then, that poisoned, too, is his invitation.

Two nights ago, Oberyn approached him for the first time. “I come from the dwarf’s tower,” he announced smugly. “Pour some wine, ser, I have a thirst.” His long-limbed sprawl offered a clear view of his tight breeches and tighter swordbelt from which hung only a curved bejeweled dirk.

Loras had flushed, incensed and offended, but he had obeyed. Too many eyes on him inferred that to refuse would be to awaken the old rivalry between Highgarden and Dorne. (Now he thinks he might have imagined it; Margaery was occupied with her ladies-in-waiting and the Queen Regent was plotting with that doddering maester she kept near.) “How did you find the Imp?” he must have asked. “Does he name any witnesses?”

“Oh, he does far better than that.” Oberyn’s laugh had been rich like Arbor gold wine and loud, too, so loud that it made Loras wonder at the outburst. “But enough about the court’s favorite traitor. What of you, Ser Loras?”

“Me?”

“Aye. How do you fare?” Something in those black eyes told Loras to tread carefully. Dornishmen are known for their proclivities and underhand victories, and Oberyn knew no shame for either. _I am a Tyrell of Highgarden,_ thought Loras, _I am an anointed knight of the Kingsguard. I was a king's right hand—but what does any of that matter when faced with a prince?_

He answered with a thin smile. “My sister has been widowed twice. How else can I fare but ill?”

It was the opening he never should have given the prince, for Dornishmen take their verbal sparring as seriously as they do mortal combat with poison blades. Oberyn’s smile had turned predatory around the rim of a gilded goblet. “Your sister’s grief is terrible, to be sure… though rumor would have it she was not alone in loving Renly Baratheon.”

“He was loved by many—“ The sputtered defense was his downfall.

“Aye. You best of all, isn’t that so?” Drained, the goblet had clanked to the table with a jarring sound that was all too quickly lost to the music of a harp in the far corner of the hall. “Come to me when you wish to forget, my lord.”

Oberyn’s hand on his shoulder had been a promise wrapped inside a caress—and it is the same now, as Loras finds himself stripped of his armor and helped onto a bed. This is not his room, nor is it Renly’s tent at the siege of Storm’s End, but the silk yields to him easily all the same. Long fingered hands slip under his shift as he crawls, scratching and guiding with equal intent.

“Bring a cup for our sweet guest, my dear.” It is the woman who speaks, though when she moved from divan to bed Loras can’t say. Her touch is sure and purposeful, but she doesn’t do more than need be done.

 _I am a Tyrell of Highgarden,_ thinks Loras, _I will not be maneuvered like some puppet._ Yet when Oberyn tugs him up by the shoulder and holds the cup to his lips, he drinks greedily. Wine splashes over his lips and runs in red rivers down his chin and neck, chased by a hungry mouth. Loras shudders weakly. “Is it poison?”

The mouth nibbling on his collarbones huffs out a laugh. “Why should we want to muddle your mind, ser, when you come to us so willingly?” If an answer is expected, Ellaria gives him no chance to offer it. She has a woman’s curves and the generous hips that must have made her attractive to the prince fit awkwardly in Loras’ pale hands. For a moment, he is concerned that he will make a fool of himself; that he cannot satisfy whatever desires she may hold. But then her touch drifts south, putting all fears to rest.

Another set of lips finds the shell of his ear as strong arms wrap around his ribcage. Were he as strong as the Mountain, the prince could press down and shatter every bone in his spine, could leave him drowning in his own warm blood, like Renly died when that bitch put a sword through his throat. It is a heady thought to entertain while the prince’s paramour strokes him through sheepskin breaches.

“I’ve heard it said you favor a strong hand, my lord. Is my love treating you well enough? You may say, we’re all friends here…” Oberyn’s breath ghosts over his ear, sticky with wine and venom and veiled threats.

When a hand comes to take hold of his throat, Loras shivers. “Please—“ He begs, though he can’t say if it’s for the prince to release him or press harder. Straining against the other man’s grip won’t free him, but then his eyes are full of Ellaria’s dark skin as she sheds her Lysene silks and long pearl necklace. Her breasts are soft to touch when she guides his hands to the pebbled nipples; her moan is soft.

“Is my lord pleased with the Tyrell rose?”

Her fingers in his mouth taste like oranges. He can't help think they should taste of summer peaches.

Oberyn laughs. “I told the Imp my paramour wished to find a blonde for us to share. Would that he could see us now…”

Loras whimpers as they kiss and bite and tear chunks out of his armor without his slightest resistance. The Imp, the treason, Margaery’s wedding feast and the poison cup: all of that fades into the gauzy canopy above the bed and the crimson pillows that muffle his cries.

They manipulate him without orders or pleas. Renly could never do as much. He tried, but his patience was thin and he always gave into his desire before he could wrest surrender out of Loras. It always brought him off to know he could arouse the Lord of the stormlands to such passion with a sheer look, but it was a greater pleasure to take him in hand or mouth and watch that mask of arrogance collapse like some gilded tower. The taste of him is on Loras’ lips now, as he rolls his tongue against a hard nipple. Though he has never done this, his hands somehow know their way over a woman’s body and he treats her no harshly than he did Renly.

Oberyn is at his back, a steady anchor layering kisses into his shoulders as he works to finish what his consort began. His own hands are unexpectedly gentle for such a hard man. They take care not to rip Loras’ clothing, nor wrench him from his breeches with the giddy longing most commonly found in paid whores. Loras half expects that smug mouth to call him wanton or depraved, as his father once did. He anticipates all sorts of mockery as his hips thrust urgently into a waiting fist. Yet all the prince seems intent on doing is touching him, egging him on with soft encouragement. “Isn’t she beautiful, Loras? Doesn’t this please you?” Of his own need, he says nothing, though Loras can feel his arousal against his back.

“Have you taken a woman before, my sweet?” Ellaria takes his mouth before he can answer and Loras finds himself moaning into her kiss, desperate for any sort of contact. She tastes nothing like Renly and speaks too softly to borrow his voice, but gods above, she is warm and Loras has been cold for so very long.

He lets her pull him into her arms, distantly aware that Oberyn is tugging his breeches down and unlacing his leather boots. Ellaria is naked from the waist up, but her skirts are all but gathered at her waist and Loras—Loras doesn’t hesitate to push them all the way up and, at a soft glide of her fingers through his hair, press his mouth where he knows she wants him.

She says something in a language he doesn’t understand, but Oberyn must, for his laugh echoes around the room like a drumbeat. “Right there, sweetling. Right there.” Unlike Renly and the whores his brothers spoke of, Ellaria Sand is bare and soft, her skin unblemished and so pink. So wet. It’s not all that different from readying Renly, on the few occasions when his king allowed it, and the hands that guide him know how to extract pleasure from an inexperienced tongue.

It surprises Loras to hear himself protest as he is pulled back by the hair. His face is flushed and his lips swollen, but he cares not a whit; he would go on, why won’t they let him go on—Oh. His mouth suffers the prince’s kiss with little grace, but this dance he knows well. He arches his spine a little, readying for the sharp burn he’s come to know so well; it happened, sometimes, when foolish need got the best of him and Renly couldn’t find it in him to say no.

It happened before, too, with his father’s steward, an affair of which only Margaery has knowledge and she is sworn to silence by the love she bears her brother.

“Why do you close your eyes to me?” asks Oberyn.

 _Because,_ thinks Loras, _you are not the man I want._ Oberyn promised to help him forget Renly, forget his touch, his scent—and he has failed.

The prince seems to know his mind, for the frown on his brow softens out into a gentled smile. “Did he love you like this?” At his behest, Ellaria takes them both, her long legs spreading around Loras’ hips and drawing him into her body with a practiced hand. For a woman trained in the art of seduction, she makes little effort to beguile or flatter. It is a welcome reprieve; enough to make Loras forget himself and thrust home on a gasp.

He makes to do it again when her hands take hold of his arse. “Be still, my lord. My prince will do the rest.”

 _They’ve done this before._ It strikes Loras like a blow, but then why should he expect anything different? He is no one, a third brother of a widowed queen, a lover doomed to loneliness. A tourney knight but not a warrior.

He hides his moan in Ellaria’s black hair, expecting the blunt head of Oberyn’s cock to force its way into his body and finding, instead, the press of warm, slick fingers. “Oh,” he breathes, clinging to the feeling as memories threaten to engulf him. The prince is careful and methodical, lending truth to rumors that he sleeps with both men and women but shattering the gossip that makes him out to be some sort of savage. He doesn’t hesitate to feast his lips on Loras’ back, nor shy from pressing teeth to the skin, though he refrains from speaking until he hears the knight beneath him beg helplessly for some sort of release.

Ellaria is tight and warm around his cock and the familiar stab of fingers inside him is too much for one man to bear in silence. “My prince…” Loras very nearly begs for Renly, too, but dead men are not known to grant favors.

He finishes too quickly for either prince or paramour to take their pleasure. His attempts to warn yield no answer and the way Ellaria mouths at his ear is no help at all. When he comes, Loras does so without words, clinging to the warm body beneath his and wishing desperately that the one behind him were his king.

Later, as Oberyn and Ellaria make love beside him on the bed, he is struck by the cracks in their foundation. Age shows in the lines on Oberyn’s face and the sagging curve of Ellaria’s bosoms. They’re people, too, and not just vipers. Loras takes their kisses greedily and lets them wrap his hand around the hard shaft of Oberyn’s cock or the soft mound of Ellaria’s cunt, though soon, they seem to forget all about him.

They go to sleep wrapped in each other’s arms, viper and concubine entwined, and Loras is left alone to gather his pride and clothes and disappear. In the doorway, he takes one final look. With a cup of wine and two pairs of hands, he has betrayed the memory of the only man he ever loved. Nothing is forgotten.


End file.
